For the TL
R version, England and Parliament were in violation of their own laws and the already existing charters that governed the American Colonies. As such, Rebellion against their rule could not be considered sinful as while even though Christians have been called to follow lawful authority, Parliament was acting unlawfully, had multiple egregious violations of both Natural Law and British Common Law against the colonies, and had rebuffed multiple attempts by the colonies to reconcile and correct their actions. As such, the colonies were left with few other recourses but complete submission to illegal government or rebellion.
Or in detail...
reposting this for
third time:
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OK... so...
I've been sitting this out, but I feel that there appears to be a hyper narrow focus on the action of the mid 1770s, ignoring the decade of political back and forth of the prior decade between Parliament and the American Colonies.
Firstly, as has been noted, everything does trace back to the aftermath of the French and Indian War (Seven Years War for the more boring British name). The first major issue that began causing problems was the reinforcement of the British
Navigation Acts in
1763. These acts inherently set the groundwork for the issues that would later unfold, in that it greatly restricted who the colonies could trade with and also required that the colonies had to import THROUGH England. These were mercantilist policies that inherently structured trade in such a way as to benefit England at the expense of the colonies.
After this you had a series of taxes that were placed and enforced on the colonies. Most of these were reasonable on their face, though they did directly harm the economy of the colonies in that they raised the cost of certain businesses. But it wasn't until 1765 and the
Stamp Act that we get into some seriously overzealous taxes that were not merely designed to raise revenue but hinder the growth of the colonies in ways the British disliked. For example, the Stamp Act reserved its highest costs, £10, for attorney licenses (which, you must understand, is a ridiculously high price when you had many common jobs paying
less than a £ a day), which served to hinder the growth of a native professional class in the colonies. Further, pretty much EVERYTHING paper was taxed, so this added a cost to the lives of everyday people in their daily business that was a constant reminder of Parliament's taxing them without representation or consent.
Also in 1765, well before any real colonial rebellious sentiment even had gotten started, Parliament also passed the
Quartering Acts, which allowed the British military to quarter their soldiers pretty much anywhere they wanted while forcing the costs of such quartering onto the local governments, none of whom wanted those troops stationed in the colonies with the end of the war. Basically, with this law Parliament said the colonies not only had to house the soldiers stationed there "for reasons" and that they would have to pay for it. This caused further tension between the colonies and Parliament for no real benefit to ANYONE involved.
In response to these the colonies began to take purely political actions to protest. The Colony of Virginia, previously long loyal to the crown, met and passed the
Virginia Resolves, which laid out Virginia's case that direct taxation upon them violated their rights as Englishmen:
Note that these assertions are true. The
first Royal Charter of Virginia, issued in 1606 contained the following clause:
This language was maintained in the
second charter. This language was not unique to Virginia either, though here I will focus on it since Virginia was the one who passed the resolution. Basically, the Virginia colony argued that, unlike what has been argued here, that the colonies had not, in fact, been formed to be seen as subject colonies but rather peer domains of England and thus the citizens of the colony of Virginia had the same rights as native born Englishmen.
Now, back to the Virginia Resolve:
Further beyond this, the colonies rallied together and formed the
Stamp Act Congress which put together the
Declaration of Rights and Grievances which the colonies sent to England for their consideration. Further, the colonists also took to boycotting English goods as much as they humanly could, which did have significant impact on English merchants who did business with the colonies and, likewise, greatly reduced the revenue the taxes were meant to collect.
Which the British even refused to do, rather than negotiate or even discuss the matter it was dismissed out of hand and while due to local ENGLISH opposition to the Stamp Act (those aforementioned merchants that the colonists were boycotting) saw it repealed, Parliament decided to make sure the uppity colonies knew their place and passed
The Declaratory Act of 1766. While the American colonists celebrated their victory over the Stamp Act, some were
very concerned with the language of the Declaratory Act, as it was almost word to word identical to the prior
Declaratory Act of 1719 which saw the start of some of the most sever Irish repression by the British and eventual reduction of the Irish to a second class colony of England.
The next year saw the passage of yet another set of economically and politically damaging to the colonies acts passed by the Parliament, the
Townshend Acts. Please note that so far there was no ongoing violence in the colonies regarding English rule and that the colonies had resorted to purely non-violent forms of protest: petition and boycott. Yet the Townshend Acts were considerably harsher. Starting with the New York Restraining Act, which basically sought to force New York to comply with the earlier mentioned quartering act. This one I'll grant is arguable, assuming you presume that you find the earlier Quartering Act just, New York's failure to enforce it obviously needed to be addressed.
Moving to the others, the Revenue Act of 1767 again placed new taxes on colonial goods, and while that was controversial, the bigger issue came from the use of
Writs of Assistance in enforcing these acts, as these writs allowed the personal property of the colonists to be searched without reason or warrant, which was long considered a violation of rights of Englishmen, as laid out in
Semayne's Case (1604) and
Entick v. Carrington (1765).
Now we get into what is arguably the most corrupt of the Townshend Acts, the "The Indemnity Act". This one is simply government cronyism at its finest, as it basically carved out a special exception on import taxes on tea for the British East India Company in order to shore up their financial situation, which was on the verge of collapse and Parliament couldn't have that since they were too big to fail. Meanwhile this inherently destroyed any ability of colonial traders to compete, as the BEIC tea would ALWAYS cost less than either the legitimately imported tea from England by local traders, or the Dutch tea brought in by traders who refused to cooperate with mercantilist policies (*cough*smugglers*cough*).
Perhaps the least harmful and most understandable of these acts was the Commissioners of Customs Act, which just established local Customs boards to enable the enforcement of British trade law more locally. Given the distances involved at the time this was a pretty reasonable thing to do.
The final Townshend Act though is perhaps the most tyrannical, and that was the Vice Admiralty Court Act. This act altered the jurisdiction of smuggling cases from colonial courts to Royal Naval Courts. This might seem reasonable on its surface, after all, smuggling in the colonies was predominately a naval affair; however, the act did not stop there. Firstly, these Courts were judged not by juries, but by judges appointed by the crown. This alone would be considered a violation of the right to jury that was afforded to all freemen in England
since at least 1641, but
it gets worse, not only were these judges empowered to hear and judge cases without trial by jury,
they were also awarded 5% of any fine the judge levied when they found someone guilty. In other words, the judges were financially incentivized to issue guilty verdicts regardless of the facts of the case.
In response to the Townshend Acts, the Massachusetts Bay Colony passed the
Massachusetts Circular Letter in 1768, which argued against direct taxation by Parliament and that the situation should be returned to the status of benign neglect as had been previous. Once again, note the timing and actions here, the colonists have yet to truly take any rebellious action, they instead petition and speak, and seek to deescalate the situation. In response to the circular letter, the Secretary of State for the Colonies
ordered the Massachusetts' General Court to repeal the letter and ordered the other colonial governments to not endorse the letter. Note what this exactly is, this is a politician in England
ordering a colonial governments, which were elected representative bodies expected to represent the will of the people to repeal or not sign onto a
petition. The General Court refused to do so, and other colonies further did sign on anyway. Once again, the colonists acted within the bounds of law, exercised peaceful assembly, petition, and speech, and what response did the British do this time?
Well, in 1768 the Royally appointed governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony dissolved the duly elected Massachusetts General Court. This finally led to widespread riots specifically in Boston which, along with the earlier dislike of the Townshend acts, caused the British to station further troops in Boston in order to maintain a public order
which they had disrupted.
Things were mostly quiet until 1770 until a confrontation between a British sentry and some locals grew out of hand and a mob began pelting the British soldiers with stones, which then led to a discharge of firearms, leading to five deaths. The so-called "Boston Massacre". The most interesting thing about this entire affair, despite how clearly it indicates how badly tensions had risen and the situation turning toxic, is not in the violence but in the aftermath. The resulting trial undertaken by the local Massachusetts government was, by all accounts, fair, and in interest of ensuring that fair trial, the British soldiers were represented by a leading colonial lawyer, Sons of Liberty member, and future President John Adams, who not only argued for their innocence but succeeded in exonerating six of the eight convicted and had the remaining two soldiers charged with murder reduced to manslaughter with a further reduced sentence. Note that this was a jury by local Bostonians who had no love for the British soldiers, even under these heightened tensions, rule of law was being maintained by both sides.
In an interesting historical coincidence, the same day the Boston Massacre happened, Parliament kind of sort of repealed the Townshend Acts. They left in place the Tea Tax exception for the BEIC and the creation of the local Custom Boards.
Through 1773 tensions continued to rise. Numerous local incidents sprung up regarding local vs Parliamentary rule, but most were at worst riots and mostly just protests. But in 1773 things took a decidedly downward turn when, once
again Parliament decided to take an action. Once again, in order to benefit the British East India Company, which had made poor financial decisions and imported more tea than demand in England required, thus costing them considerable money, passed the
Tea Act. This mercantilist and cronyist act went beyond the Townshend acts and gave the BEIC considerable benefits that no other English trader had in the tea trade. Businessmen in the colonies who deal with tea knew that this would put them out of business entirely and so organized efforts to refuse the tea entry into the colonies. Most of these efforts were peaceful, simply refusing to let BEIC ships offload tea in colonial ports along with, once again, boycotting of British goods. However, one group of Bostonians took the matter farther, leading to potentially the most financial damaging act of vandalism in modern times: the Boston Tea Party.
Now, let's not beat around the bush, the Boston Tea Party was absolutely a crime. Specifically, as I called it, vandalism. This was even recognized by some of the leading colonial secessionists of the time, with none other than Ben Franklin saying that the cost of the tea destroyed should be paid back (a considerable sum of £9,000). Some colonial merchants even offered to pay for the destroyed tea but were refused.
Instead, Parliament reacted in with a series of acts. Please note that while at this point a crime had taken place,
there was no truly open rebellion, and while some parties were pushing for secession from England at this point, they had not taken up arms or done anything worse than destroy a symbolic luxury good.
Now, an aside. Let's talk about crime and punishment. It is a long considered human principle that punishment must fit the crime and be proportionate to the damage caused by the crime. This is the underlying principle of "and eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth" punishment fitting the crime and in proportion to the damage caused. Punishments in excess of a crime committed are, under western religious and philosophical tradition, considered unjust and acts of tyranny, being sure signs that a government is no longer acting in the interests of the governed and no longer has legitimate right to rule. Another core aspect of justice is that the innocent should not be punished for the acts of the guilty and that people are considered innocent until proven guilty. These principles have long, LONG history in Western law, being drawn from ancient legal philosophy of the Romans, Jews, and Canon law.
So, Parliament passed the following Acts in response to the vandalism of British East India Company property. First was
Boston Port Act, this act closed the port of Boston to all trade, punishing everyone in Boston for the acts of a small subset of them.
But that was not the only collective punishment Parliament undertook, they further passed the
Massachusetts Government Act which functionally abolished local self-rule of the colony and prohibited Town Hall meetings without the royally appointed governor's assent. Once again punishing all of Massachusetts for the action of a small subset.
Not content with just punishing Massachusetts it also set out to insult them by passing the "
Administration of Justice Act" which allowed royal governors to alter the venue of a trial from the local courts to any other jurisdiction, while requiring witnesses and lawyers for both sides to attend in the new venue. This basically was an arrangement to guarantee that a trial would be in a court favorable to the crown. Note how this act especially was a middle finger to Massachusetts in that only a few years before they had held a fair trial for British soldiers in heightened tensions.
Next, in application to all the colonies, the British passed
The Quartering Act of 1774, which again had all the same problems as the earlier Quartering Act.
In response to these acts, the Colonies did not yet take up arms, rather, once again, they sought to boycotts and petition with the
Suffolk Resolves and the
Petition to the King.
So, a quick aside, with all this going on, it should be noted that while Parliament kept passing these laws, there WAS vocal opposition to these acts in that body.
PM Edmund Burke spoke EXTENSIVELY in favor of the colonial position on many of these matters, arguing for peace and reconciliation and arguing that the colonists were correct in their understanding of their status as Englishmen with all the rights that entailed.
However, despite all this, despite not having taken up arms against the Crown, the British would not back down. Seeking to seize the private property of local militia, British troops from Boston marched to the militia storehouses in Lexington and Concord. At this point, with the attempt to unlawfully seize private assets and the means of self-defense of themselves and their families (which was, again,
a violation of basic English rights of the time), did the colonists finally truly react with violence, with the
Battle of Lexington and Concord. Meanwhile, in Virginia, the local governor attempted to do the same thing in a colony without this same long history of back and forth with Parliament as Massachusetts had,
which was also rebuffed by local efforts and forced the royal governor to flee the colony.
So, while there is certain one criminal act on the part of the Bostonians, the actions before that and reaction by Parliament, by ignoring the colonial charters guaranteeing them the same rights as Englishmen, collective and disproportionate punishment to said crime, and then finally bringing the issue to boil by attempting to seize private arms in violation of both the natural right to self-defense and the rights of men under English common law, clearly showcase that it was the British Parliament that escalated the situation, that violated the rights of the colonists, and generally acted immorally throughout the entire affair. Meanwhile up until the very last, the colonists used non-violent means to protest these decision, seeking redress via peaceful petition and boycott, and only in the last few years after a decade of continual escalation on the part of Parliament, did open violence result.
I cannot see how it can be presumed that Parliament was moral in doing this, unless one accepts the presumption of pure Parliamentary supremacy, as the acts of Parliament clearly contravened both Monarchical decrees, in the form of the Royal colonial charters, and general republican principles of representation in government. Despite the rhetoric of the day, it was not, in fact, the Crown, the monarch, that was the leading figure in pushing these laws against the America colonies, rather, it was the Parliament doing so seeking to assert its dominance, and it was opposed in this act not just by the colonists, but even by members of its own body who recognized the actions being taken by the Parliament were unjust.
